Cespedes day to day with sore right hip

MIAMI -- A team already playing without starting position players David Wright, Lucas Duda and Travis d'Arnaud sustained another blow on Saturday, when the Mets scratched outfielder Yoenis Cespedes about a half hour before a 6-4 win over the Marlins with a sore right hip. Cespedes is day to day, but the Mets won't be certain of his status until he sees a doctor on Sunday.

"I'm not really concerned," Cespedes said through an interpreter. "This has happened to me like three other times. I know it goes away after some rest."

MIAMI -- A team already playing without starting position players David Wright, Lucas Duda and Travis d'Arnaud sustained another blow on Saturday, when the Mets scratched outfielder Yoenis Cespedes about a half hour before a 6-4 win over the Marlins with a sore right hip. Cespedes is day to day, but the Mets won't be certain of his status until he sees a doctor on Sunday.

"I'm not really concerned," Cespedes said through an interpreter. "This has happened to me like three other times. I know it goes away after some rest."

Cespedes, 30, is batting .278 with a team-high 15 home runs. He had appeared in each of the Mets' last 33 games, starting 32 of them.

The Mets replaced Cespedes in the lineup with Michael Conforto, who was originally scheduled to sit against left-handed Marlins starter Justin Nicolino. Conforto wound up finishing 1-for-4 with two RBIs, snapping an 0-for-20 skid at the plate, while several other players shifted upward in the lineup to accommodate the loss of Cespedes.

"He got some treatment, did some things that we thought would loosen him up," manager Terry Collins said. "He did not. And then during the game, he got no better, so he would not help us today."

Cespedes missed a game this spring due to hip discomfort, which Collins said he played through for much of March. The outfielder wound up appearing in each of the Mets' first 15 regular-season games, until a bruised right knee -- the result of Cespedes flying into the Citi Field stands to catch a foul ball -- cost him five days out of the starting lineup. Cespedes eventually had fluid drained from the knee, and he did not miss another game until Saturday.

He is in the first season of a three-year, $75 million contract with an opt-out clause this winter.

The hip soreness, Cespedes said, is something that has popped up at least three times in his recent past. On each occasion, it did not linger.

But Cespedes is a strong bet to be out of the lineup on Sunday, for a Mets team that can ill afford to play shorthanded for an extended period of time. Juan Lagares is also day to day with a bruised left thumb, in addition to all the starting position players the Mets have on the disabled list. They may call up a position player from Triple-A Las Vegas in the coming days to help with their depth problem.